Saturday's Republican debate showed that former bad boy Newt Gingrich is a born again front-runner

Newt Gingrich made a strong play for the evangelical vote at an Iowa "family forum"

It was the most intellectually and emotionally charged debate of the presidential primaries so far … and hardly anyone watched it. On Saturday night (in the middle of college football season), six of the Republican candidates gathered around a table in an Iowa church to discuss “faith and the family”. Because Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman were absent, the debate lacked its usual newsworthy spark. But it did offer some fascinating insights into the competing philosophies at work in the contemporary GOP. The panel agreed on the central importance of Jesus to just about everything. But they disagreed sharply about the implications for 21st-century America.

Missing the usual back and forth between Romney and his detractors, the discussion instead focused on what the candidates believe and why. I learnt the following:

1. Michele Bachmann is the product of a broken home. When asked about the event in her childhood that most shaped her politics, Bachmann cited the day her parents split up and she became the child of a single mom. It’s obvious that Bachmann’s philosophy is more about personal experience than ideology. “I learnt the true value of a dollar,” she said, describing how her babysitting job turned her into a fiscal conservative. Bachmann’s an activist, a doer. Her entire philosophy seems to revolve around self-reliance mandated, or perhaps made bearable, by her belief in a loving God. She also told us that she was “saved at 16”, which happens to be the exact same age I started actively sinning.

2. Rick Santorum enjoys telling other people what to do. Of all the candidates, the one who best confirms European stereotypes of the jackbooted Puritan is Santorum. “This country was created by men who believed in God,” he said, “and our civil laws have to comport with the higher law.” Santorum obviously thinks that the Founding Fathers defined religious freedom solely as the freedom to be religious – always and everywhere, and even at the expense of other people’s fun. On Saturday night, Santorum earned a lot of applause by attacking homosexuality and promised, if elected, to tour the country fighting it. “Our country is based on a moral enterprise,” he concluded. “Gay marriage is wrong!” Rick also says that he hates the Iranian theocracy, but I suspect that if it were Lutheran he’d absolutely love it.

3. Herman Cain probably cries during sad movies. That guy can really turn on the taps. Herman wept not just once but twice during this debate. Responding to a question about personal challenges, he cited his greatest trial as the moment when he was diagnosed with cancer. With tears in his eyes, he delivered this killer line: “I said to my wife, ‘I can get through this.’ She replied, ‘We can get through this.’” Later, when asked what his biggest failing in life was, Cain broke down again when he said that he hadn’t spent enough time with his young daughters. The camera fell on Gingrich, whose eyes seemed to say, “Buddy, I’m sure you’ve done a lot worse than that.”

4. Rick Perry enjoys talking to Christians. After several awful debate performances, Perry was surprisingly good. When Cain was done talking about surviving cancer, Perry offered as his "greatest challenge" growing up in rural Texas. He recalled going to a school with just ten students: “And I graduated in the top ten of my class.” Funny and warm, the audience got a glimpse of a Perry who is much sharper on the stump.

5. Ron Paul is a complicated beast. The evening offered Paul the chance to explain the contradiction at the heart of his philosophy: he is both socially conservative and a libertarian. Paul stressed that just because he wants freedom of choice doesn't mean that he condones all the moral choices on the table. He illustrated his point by saying “Legalisation doesn’t mean endorsement … You can even be an atheist in this country nowadays.” (Shock, horror!) Paul argued that the role of government wasn’t to define culture but to guarantee the liberty within which sound morality will flourish. The idea is that if Christianity goes up against humanism in a free marketplace of ideas, its self-evident superiority will make it a consumer hit. Ergo, Ron Paul is just as uptight as Rick Santorum – but he trusts in the people’s ability to choose good over evil.

6. Newt Gingrich is a front runner.Ryan Mauro wrote a piece this week that claimed that Newt is burying his bad boy image and making a play for the evangelical vote. Tonight confirmed that. He avoided talking about his divorce, but, in confessional language that appeals to evangelicals, he described his earlier life as “empty” and reckless. He even recalled that a friend told him he had all the symptoms of an alcoholic and had given him the AA’s Twelve Step Program to help him recover. On Saturday night, Newt promised to abolish courts that stop students from invoking God at football games, to reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and to expand Congress’s definition of personhood as a means to outlawing abortion. Most interestingly, he argued that the contemporary “crisis of values” stems from the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution. It’s a subtle reminder that Gingrich sounds like an evangelical but is actually a Catholic convert. In sectarian terms, Newt plays for both teams and does it very well.

Out of this crowd, the candidates with the best polling numbers are Gingrich and Paul: Gingrich is running second nationwide and Paul is second in Iowa. Between those two men there is an interesting conflict brewing. Gingrich is a big government conservative who would rewrite the Constitution and use Federal power to promote what he regards as popular, all-American ethics undone by decades of liberal jurisprudence. Paul is a “small-to-no” government conservative who believes that the way to encourage good behaviour is by deconstructing the welfare/warfare state – a position best summarised by his closing statement, “Bad economics and war are the two most destructive things to the family”. The American conservative movement has never quite resolved its contradictory impulse both to promote and deconstruct. After all the tears and laughter of Saturday night's debate, the conflict remains unresolved. But, given the relative numerical strength of evangelicals within the GOP, I'll wager than Gingrich will win it.